"What do you fear?" he asked her, in the tongue of the country.
She started afresh at the sound of his voice, and drew her disordered dress together, and stood mute, with her hands crossed on her bosom, and the blood coming and going under her transparent skin.
"What do you fear?" he asked again.
"I fear?"
She echoed the cowardly word with a half-tremulous defiance; the heroism of her nature, which an hour earlier had been lashed to its fullest strength, cast back the question as an insult; but her voice was low and husky, and the blood dyed her face scarlet as she spoke.
For she feared him; and for the moment she had forgotten how she had come there and all that had passed, except that some instinct of the long-hunted animal was astir in her to hide herself and fly.
But he stood between her and the passage outward, and pride and shame held her motionless. Moreover, she still listened intently: the confused voices of the children still seemed to her like those of the multitude by whom she had been chased; and she was ready to leap tiger-like upon them, rather than let them degrade her in his sight.
He looked at her with some touch of interest: she was to him only some stray beggar-girl, who had trespassed into his solitude; yet her untamed regard, her wide-open eyes, the staglike grace of her attitude, the sullen strength which spoke in her reply,—all attracted him to closer notice of these.
"Why are you in this place?" he asked her, slowly. "You were asleep here when I came, more than an hour ago."
The color burned in her face: she said nothing.